Virtual tour, video walk-through (or should it be 'walk-through video?), online viewing, viewing webinar, WhatsApp viewing, Zoom call, just to name a few. Most of these terms were not used prior to the unforgettable 2020. But the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown pushed the estate and letting agency business into a completely territory: the territory of serving customers whilst they were at home.
The old school agents would say that all these online tools are gimmicks that will be forgotten once the restrictions are fully lifter. They would be the same agents that said 20 years ago that online portals would never replace window cards and newspaper ads. They would be the same agents that said 10 years ago that social media was not for the professional agents. But these agents will be spending most of their marketing budget in internet portals and social media ads today.
Virtual tours, walk-through videos, and other online viewing tools will never replace a physical viewing to a property. But these tools are now essential to bring good quality buyers and tenants through the front door. Those sellers, landlords and agents who refuse to bring them to their toolbox are drastically reducing their chances of succeeding in a tough competitive market.
The good old days!
Prior to the pandemic, the main two ways of improving your chances to get your property seen were:
Professional Pictures: We would spend hundreds of pounds commissioning professional pictures. They had to have a great composition, good lighting, sharp and tell a story.
A great description: A Shakespeare homage to property and business would have been a good start!
But in the last 18 months we all have learnt that we can do much more from home. We still seek the final 'real' outcome: the holiday, the theater night out, the meal of our choice, the workout with our friends. But more steps of that decision making, if not the whole process including the final result, can be completed from the comfort of our home.
In the letting agent world this means the introduction of some element, which weren't new, but had been ignored until then.
Walk-though videos
The simplest form will be an unedited video taken using a smartphone, with very little preparation of the property. As soon as the video is completed it's uploaded on YouTube (for free) and shared in the property portals (Rightmove, Zoopla, etc). This approach is:
• Fast
• OK for low end, not so well presented properties
• It gathers the initial attention of the potential tenant (Oh, the property has a video!)
• It seriously risk losing the potential tenant away from the property. At the end of the video, the tenant will be given a handful of options of next videos to watch in YouTube. That's opposite to the result we want to achieve: we need the potential applicant to make an enquiry about the property as soon as they finish watching the video.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have fully edited videos, with titles throughout the video and background music in line with the style of the property. Even more important, these videos are not hosted in YouTube, but in paid platforms, including Vimeo, which will allow the agent to control the 'Call to Action' at the end of the video. Buttons can be presented to take the potential tenant to the next step (to book a viewing), and the risk of the potential tenant getting distracted with other videos that have nothing to do with the property is completely removed. In summary, a well prepared walk-though video will have the following characteristics:
• It will take typically a day to shoot and edit.
• It will give a much better impression of the property, thus it should be used for high end properties
• It will also gather the attention to the potential tenant, but because it's nicer to the eye (and ears) the users is more likely to watch it to the end.
• It will keep the potential tenant in the 'property environment'. At the end of the video a very specific 'Call to Action' will take the tenant to the point of book an appointment to visit the property.
• It will avoid the risk of losing the tenant into the very busy and distracting environment of YouTube.
360 Virtual Tours
These virtual tours have nothing to do with a 'Walk-through Video'. These virtual tours are a presentation of the property in an format that allows the user (the potential tenant) to navigate throughout the property at their own pace, in the order that they would like, which is as close as it gets to the real experience to visiting the property. However, not all virtual tours are created equal! Similarly to what happens to walk-through videos, there are low end and high end virtual tours.
The simplest virtual tours are a series of 360 pictures (typically 1 picture per room) stitch together. The user can go to a room, look around from the middle of the room, and then click to the next door to move to the following room and repeat.
On the other side of the scale, we have 360 Interactive Virtual Tours. Matterport is the king of virtual tours. Although the principle is similar to a simple virtual tour, there are some fundamental differences:
• The images are very high resolutions. They are taken with a camera with a resolution of 128 Megapixels. For reference a typical high resolution pictures is only 18 Megapixels. They are also taken using a sturdy professional tripod (the camera weighs over 3kgs!) that make the image extremely sharp.
• Most rooms images are built from 3 to 5 points, thus it gives the user a wider options to explore the room from different points.
• The presentation includes labels and explanations pointing to specific features of the property so that they can be promoted. It's as close as it gets to having a letting negotiator next to the user explaining the property in detail.
• The users can measure distances between walls, size of furniture, size of windows, which allows them to learn more about the property in advance, and prepare to the home move once they commit to the property.
• The presentation includes a 3D 'doll house' style mode, which allow the users to better understand the layout of the property (internally and externally), hence enhancing the overall experience. It's as close as it gets to 'visiting the real property'
What it's most important, a high end 360 Interactive Virtual Tour will give the tenant a sense of urgency. Yes, they are 'virtually' visiting the property from home. But another potential tenant could be doing exactly the same thing right now. They are not alone in a room with the letting agent in front of them. They are in the World Wide Web looking at something that, without a shadow of a doubt, somebody else is looking at too.
The excuses
After all this explanation, landlords will still ask, 'Well, but do I really need to have a 360 Interactive Virtual Tour?'. The answer is, 'It depends'. Do you want to rent you property fast at the highest rent? If the answer is 'Yes', then 'Absolutely, you will be better off having a 360 Interactive Virtual Tour'. This tool will put your property head above shoulders when compared to the rest of the market. Your property will receive more leads and you have a higher probability of having a good quality tenant in your property.
The next idea landlords will come up with will be, 'Well, we'll try without the 360 Virtual Tour for a few weeks, and if the property doesn't let then we will get the 360 Virtual Tour organised'. This argument defies logic. This argument is close to gambling. The suggestion is:
We don’t want to spend the cost of a virtual tour now (typically between £150 to £300, depending on the provider).
If we don't get a tenant within 'a few weeks' (which should be read more likely 1 to 2 months), then we think about it. By then, the landlord will be two month of rent (plus council tax and utilities) worse off, which will have made the cost of a virtual tour to look ridiculously low.
If the landlord is lucky enough to find a tenant quick (against competitors that have 360 Interactive Virtual Tours), great new! Or not? What will happen when the property comes back to the market in a couple of years? If a 360 Interactive Virtual Tour was completed now, the property could be promoted with all the 21st century tools available even before the tenant vacates the property. If no 360 Interactive Virtual Tour is completed now then we will rely on the old pictures and description (the same way that properties were promoted in the 19th century) to let the property again. If that happens at a time when the market is not in favour of the landlord, hindsight would say 'It would have been great to have a 360 Interactive Virtual Tour' when we first thought about it.
We have seen them all. We have seen properties with 360 Interactive Virtual Tours let fast once (and in some cases twice after short tenancies). And we have seen good, nice properties, sitting empty, just because on the final stretch, after investing hundreds of thousands of pounds in a property, landlords elect to save £150 on marketing. 'You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink.'
Unless landlords are not bothered about letting their property fast at the highest possible rent, they should give very serious consideration to 360 Interactive Virtual Tours.
Whether you are a DIY landlord and you do all your marketing, or you outsource the marketing and management of your portfolio, embrace technology with both hands and start using 360 Interactive Virtual Tours.